In the eye of the storm

Balochistan, Pakistan's largest province, is today torn by a separatist movement that threatens the unity of the country. Bordering Iran and Afghanistan, this region seems to be the newest chapter in the Great Game that Pakistan alleges is partly being scripted by India.

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Hasan Zaidi

August 6, 2009

ISSUE DATE: August 17, 2009

UPDATED: August 11, 2009 09:27 IST

Hemmed in by three different mountain ranges, Quetta is lush compared to the stark and magnificently barren-almost lunar-landscape beyond the valley. Miles upon miles of brown desert with no vegetation in sight, and mountain after bleak mountain scrunched together with almost no human settlement visible.

Baloch rebels armed with rocket launchers and automatic weapons

It hardly seems like the kind of place that has aroused such sharp passions between the Pakistani and Indian establishments and on which is centred the latest diplomatic storm that began last month with a prime ministerial handshake in Egypt's Sharm el-Sheikh.

That was when a joint statement issued by prime ministers Manmohan Singh and Yousuf Raza Gilani specifically referred to the need to address "threats in Balochistan", an oblique allusion to Pakistani allegations of Indian intelligence involvement in destabilising the region.

Till a couple of decades ago, Quetta was a sleepy little town known for its dried fruit markets hawking excellent pistas, almonds, apricots and pine nuts brought in from neighbouring Iran and Afghanistan, as well as its clean air. Post the massive influx in the 1980s of Afghan refugees-many of whom have settled in the city and established businesses-Quetta lost its reputation as a 'clean', well-manicured town. And recently, it has also received notoriety after American and Afghan allegations-denied strongly by Pakistan-that the top leadership of the Taliban is based in the city.

Quetta is now part of a completely different, deadly political battle raging across the province, which has seen bombs go off with alarming regularity, electricity pylons and infrastructure assets destroyed, security personnel attacked by shadowy insurgents, disappearances of people and a rising tide of political radicalism. As a military operation against "terrorists" rages in Kohlu and Dera Bugti districts, over 150 miles to the south-east, Quetta has seen a number of targeted killings of policemen and non-Baloch residents in an apparent effort at ethnic cleansing.

Resistance movements

Balochistan Liberation ArmyAllegedly formed in 2000 by Balach Marri and supported by Nawab Akbar Khan Bugti's militias.After Balach's death, his brother Herbiyar is accused of running it from London.

Baloch Republican PartyHeaded by Brahmdagh Bugti and considered an off-shoot of the Balochistan Liberation Army.Operates mainly in Dera Bugti and Quetta. Brahmdagh is believed to be in hiding in Kabul.

Alleged Indian involvementPakistan accuses India of using its consulates in Zahedan in Iran and Kandahar in Afghanistan to foment trouble in Balochistan.

Driving into the city from the airport, the presence of paramilitary forces is evident. Their trucks with machine guns mounted on top can often be seen patrolling on the roads while sandbagged bunkers have been established at various intersections. Further in are a number of checkposts, a nuisance that residents complain bitterly about, as well as recounting tales of the "insulting behaviour" of the security personnel. The Balochistan Frontier Corps (FC), the pre-eminent law enforcement agency in the province, was only asked to handle security in the provincial capital on June 29 this year after a spate of targeted killings.

Quetta, in fact, is largely a Pashtun city, especially after the influx of Afghan refugees. In spite of this, or precisely because of it, the Baloch question is what the current strife is all about. Balochistan province-which only came into being in 1970 with the amalgamation of largely autonomous tribal fiefdoms-is the biggest province by far in Pakistan, comprising approximately 44 per cent of the total land mass. Yet, it contains less than 7 per cent of the country's population.

Of that, only about half is Baloch, mostly concentrated in the "Baloch belt" in the south, east, south-eastern and south-western parts of the province. Not only do the Baloch feel they are being made a minority in their own province, they feel their province has been discriminated against, economically and socially.

Because of a number of reasons, including the difficult terrain and sparseness of the population, Balochistan has remained a severely underdeveloped area with generally the worst social indicators in the whole country. Many commentators, including some Baloch nationalists, have accused the tribal sardars or chiefs-who command almost totalitarian authority in their areas-of impeding development in their areas to preserve their subjects dependence on them.

Baloch rebels often clash with Pakistani Security Forces at Derabugti near Quetta

Others point to the lack of capacity. For example, during General Pervez Musharraf's tenure as president, Rs 350 billion were allocated for Balochistan in seven years in the federal development budget-compared to the mere Rs 129 billion allocated in the 29 years before it-yet the actual deployment on the ground was much less because the ability to utilise it was missing.

Increasingly, however, Baloch politicians blame Islamabad for the underdevelopment, accusing the federation, and in particular the most populous Punjab province, of exploiting the natural resources of the province without adequate compensation.

Many of the accusations made by Baloch politicians-who are dominated by the same tribal sardars-are political rhetoric, designed to present themselves as patriotic nationalists to their domestic constituents. But on the issue of natural resources, they have a point. Natural gas, discovered in 1963 in the Sui area of Dera Bugti, supplies all of Pakistan.

Yet, the Balochistan government is only paid 12.5 per cent royalty for this energy resource and most parts of Dera Bugti district itself still do not have piped gas. The province also has one of the largest copper and gold deposits in the world in the Chagai district near the Iran border. Yet the two main extraction projects at Reko Diq and Saindak, operated jointly with international companies from Italy, Australia and China, pay only a small royalty to the provincial government.

None of the substantial transit trade that plies between Afghanistan and Iran and the rest of Pakistan pays any duty to the provincial government. It is also speculated that large oil reserves lie untapped in parts of Balochistan and Baloch leaders allege that Pakistan's civil and military bureaucracy has its eye on them as well. They also claim, correctly, that the mega-projects in the province often bypass the local population and also utilise non-local labour rather than providing jobs to residents.

The economic stakes are high. But the strategic stakes are perhaps even higher. Balochistan sits on the energy corridor of Central Asia, able to provide the most direct route for the vast reserves of oil and natural gas in those areas to the Arabian Sea, especially with the West at continued loggerheads with Iran.

Mining wealth

The region is Pakistan's richest source of natural resources

Gas: Supplies all of Pakistan

Gold: One of the largest deposits in the world

Copper: Significant exports for Pakistan

Port: Gwadar is a strategic port

The gas pipeline from Iran, originally meant to supply gas to India as well, will also pass through Balochistan. The Russians had long eyed the access Balochistan could provide to the Persian Gulf. The Chinese investment of over $1 billion in the construction of Gwadar port on the Balochistan coast is seen by analysts as an attempt by the emerging superpower to not only secure its energy supplies from the Middle East and Africa and to eventually provide it a foothold into Central Asia but also as a challenge to US interests.

In fact, there has been significant unease among the American military about the port providing the Chinese Navy a "listening post" to challenge the almost total US control of the Straits of Hormuz. The Gwadar port also has the potential to threaten the relevance of the Iran port of Chabahar, built with Indian assistance, and Dubai as a trading hub, as well as to provide strategic depth to Pakistan's navy against an Indian blockade.

Because of this "Great Game", Pakistani intelligence believes that a number of foreign intelligence agencies are operating in Balochistan for their own competing interests. "Name any agency," says a source based in Islamabad, "and they are all there." But it is the involvement of Indian intelligence that particularly irks Pakistan.

Pakistani forces have been complaining for at least four years about the newly established Indian consulates in Afghanistan being used as bases for covert operations against Pakistan in the North-West and Balochistan and claim that India was "pumping money" into the area through financing separatist and terrorist groups, a claim they believed was corroborated by Christine Fair, a Washington-based RAND Corporation analyst, even though she later stated she meant it only in the sense of "cultivating assets".

"India found a quid pro quo for Kashmir in Balochistan," Major General Salim Nawaz, the head of FC told India Today. "We have captured terrorists with satellite phones and mobile phones whose logs show calls to Afghanistan and India and their interrogations also reveal the link. We know Brahmdagh Bugti is sitting in Kabul and being 'handled' by Indian agents. We even have photographs of him visiting Delhi and being received there. There is no doubt there is genuine resentment over the deprivation of Balochistan, but the kind of armed insurgency we are facing requires financing to sustain the flow of arms."

Violent protests erupted in Pakistan following the death of Bugti tribal chief Nawab Akbar Khan Bugti

Brahmdagh Bugti, the 27-year-old mentioned by Nawaz-himself of Baloch ancestry incidentally-is of course at the centre of the current conflict. One of the grandsons of Bugti tribe chieftain Nawab Akbar Khan Bugti, who was killed in August 2006 during an army operation when a cave he was hiding in collapsed, Brahmdagh has been in hiding since the beginning of the military operation in December 2005.

He has set up the Balochistan Republican Army (BRA) and its political wing, the Balochistan Republican Party (BRP), which according to him "is waging an armed struggle for rights of the Baloch". The BRA has taken the credit for a number of acts of sabotage and rocket attacks in Dera Bugti and Quetta as well as the killing of security personnel- some 139 FC personnel have died so far in addition to policemen-and calling for the killing of "Punjabi settlers." The latest were eight policemen and labourers who were abducted along with five others and whose bodies were found dumped on August 2.

It is said that Brahmdagh was the favourite grandson of the Nawab who wanted to anoint him as his successor, but was unable to do so because of a lack of consensus among his own family. His cousin, Mir Aali Bugti -the eldest son of Akbar Bugti's eldest son- has now been anointed the new chief of the Bugti tribe, allegedly with the support of the Pakistan government, which has led to a blood feud between the cousins. In an interview from "an undisclosed location" to a local television channel in April, Brahmdagh announced that he "would welcome support from India or anyone else".

India on its part has vehemently denied any involvement in Balochistan and Manmohan's reason for allowing the Sharm el-Sheikh joint statement to mention the B-word is because he said India had nothing to hide. Indian officials say that part of the reason why Pakistan raises the Balochistan issue is because it resents the goodwill India is getting in Afghanistan following its development projects that have helped India establish a strategic foothold in the war-ravaged country. Pakistan also believes that it is now being hemmed in both on its eastern and western borders by India.

Turbulent decades

1948: Pakistan's military threat forces accession of princely state of Kalat to Pakistan.

1974: The first major Baloch revolt.Ruthlessly crushed by Pakistan and Iran.

2005: The Pakistan Army begins an operation in the Marri tribal area against the rebels.

The other major player in the militancy is Mir Herbiyar Marri, another son of a tribal chieftain Khair Bakhsh Marri, who himself was part of an armed insurgency in the 1970s. Herbiyar, a former provincial minister, is self-exiled in London and is allegedly the head of the Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA)-though he denies it- which operates mainly in the Marri area of Kohlu where the main army operation is being carried out.

Herbiyar openly advocates the secession of Balochistan from Pakistan and has called on the West and the United Nations to support his demand for an independent Balochistan.

A third smaller armed group is the Balochistan Liberation Front (BLF) which operates mainly in the southern Mekran region and advocates an independent 'Greater Balochistan' comprising parts of Iran's Balochistan-Sistan province, parts of Afghanistan as well as parts of Sindh and Punjab provinces where Baloch populations reside. It is headed by Allah Nazar since its founder Ghulam Mohammad Baloch was killed in April.

But how much support do these groups actually have? Major General Nawaz estimates that the "hardcore" of all these groups combined is not more than 200 men, assisted by some more hundreds of sympathisers.

However, the general perception in Quetta is that large numbers of youth have been radicalised by the continuing military operations in the Marri and Bugti areas, the strong-arm tactics of the Pakistani intelligence services, as well as the perception of the Baloch receiving an unfair deal from Islamabad.

"What do you expect to happen?" says veteran politician Abdul Hayee Baloch of the National Party, who is a rare nonsardar in Balochistan's political landscape. "When people see that military operations have been going on against us since 1948, when they see their exploitation and when they see the military establishment unwilling to cede control to the people whose land it is, these hatreds will obviously grow."

Some political activists in Quetta believe that this increasing radicalisation of the youth has reduced the influence of the mainstream political parties, and forced them into harsher political rhetoric lest they cede more ground to the radicals.

Baloch protesters at a rally in Quetta

Despite the claims of India's involvement in Balochistan, Pakistani security officials such as Major General Nawaz acknowledge that the roots of the problem lie in the alienation of the Baloch. "We should be ashamed that our people should come to a point where they are willing to be used by external interests," he says. "We need to create the political space whereby parties that believe in federal politics can come and assert themselves. And we need to sincerely address the real issues of socio-political dissatisfaction which has led to this stage of frustration."

Most mainstream parties, despite their resentments, believe that being of Baloch ancestry, President Asif Ali Zardari, is sincere about finding a solution to the problems of Balochistan, though they also express doubt at how much real power he and the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) Chief Minister Sardar Aslam Raisani have to influence the military which they feel controls Balochistan policy.

Zardari tasked senior PPP leader Raza Rabbani with putting forward a series of recommendations to address the alienation of Balochistan, and these recommendations have already been presented to the prime minister. Though not yet made public, it is understood that they build on the recommendations of the committee headed by Senator Mushahid Hussain during the previous government and address most of the hot-button issues including more equitable royalty from gas and minerals, greater Baloch control over the Gwadar port, mandatory utilisation of local labour and a greater share in the National Finance Commission award to the province, as well as a special status for the province to spur development.

The separatist groups have already rejected any dialogue with the state and have, in fact, announced they would proclaim an independent Balochistan on August 11. The mainstream parties are mostly hoping that the government announces a package that is dramatic enough to take the wind out of the radicals' sails. Given the intensity of feelings that the issue engenders, the window of opportunity for the government's action is indeed very small.

Troubled territory

The largest of Pakistan's four provinces, Balochistan comprises 44 per cent of the land mass. The Baloch ethnic minority straddles parts of Pakistan and Iran and makes up only 4 per cent of Pakistan's total population, most of it under sway of tribal leaders. The princely state of Kalat (now central Balochistan) was granted independence before India and Pakistan but was forced to accede to Pakistan in 1948. The current province of Balochistan was formed in 1970. Since then, an insurgency has periodically flared up over demands for greater autonomy for the region and a larger share of the natural resources.

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